Valley Line LRT | TransEd/Marigold | City of Edmonton

CplKlinger said:
What action is the city supposed to take? Homelessness, addiction, and social services are a provincial responsibility. The judicial system is a provincial responsibility. Housing is a provincial responsibility. Every time the city tries to do anything about any of that, the province tells it to stay in its lane. So what could a "Mark Carney-type mayor" do in reality? Why don't we need a "Mark Carney-type premier"? The province has the fiscal capacity, the resources, and most importantly, the actual mandate. How about they stay in their lane and spend more time addressing judicial backlogs, shelter gaps and overcrowding, and addictions issues, and spend less time policing where cities build bike lanes and where public libraries put books?

Also, multiple councilors use transit. Sheesh, one of them literally quit his job with ETS to run for council and posts regular pictures of his commute on transit.
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All those are *a* provincial responsibility, but they're not *solely* provincial responsibilities. And yes, I know you might say you're fully aware that all three levels of government share responsibility, but one must stop instinctively passing the buck to the province whenever a complaint arises.

For one, the province as of now is governed by the UCP, a conservative party that by design is at direct odds with the more progressive Edmonton. The UCP shut down or otherwise stopped supporting safe injections sites and homeless shelters, which Edmonton values quite a lot. Whether these things actually work (except for rare instances, they mostly don't anyway) is beside the point. The UCP, and consequently the province of Alberta, wants to wash their hands of this, so assigning the problems of Edmonton as the responsibility of the province of Alberta means diddly-squat.

And another, more important factor, Edmonton is already doing a lot to fix these problems. They've passed major reforms in zoning and are the first city in Canada to have a tax subclass for derelict properties, incentivizing owners to do something about them. Edmonton is allowing 8-plexes on one plot of land, and they're building supportive housing all throughout the city. They gave so much freedom and choices when it comes to housing that some people are responding in backlash because they feel they went too free.

Of course, this is proof that Edmonton can solve problems if they so choose. I am aware how council constantly knocks down proposals to install fare gates at the LRT stations because of some reason or another, and yes, there's something to be said about the progressive elements of the council causing them to drag their feet on fighting crime and disorder, especially post-COVID. However, I am optimistic that they'll actively make the LRT safer and cleaner. If they are as passionate as they say they are about being a transit-oriented city, with transit lines and transit-centric development, sooner or later they will need to square that circle of advocating people to take unsafe transit and realize the only way to encourage transit use is to make it safe and clean, and therefore appealing to the average Joe.
 
CplKlinger said:
Because there's no room in the jails to hold all of them, so after their initial processing they get released until a judge can finally hear their case. That's a provincial thing. As for calling out other communities, Edmonton has been but that doesn't mean they'll listen. And again, that's just talk and not the action you want to see.


Sure, I'd love to see more cleaning. But we also need to acknowledge that it's a glorified game of whack-a-mole so long as there's no place for those people to go - be it shelters or jails. Again, that's a provincial thing. All the city can do is hire enough janitors to follow every homeless person with a broom and mop.


Well, let's focus on Alberta. Where is our promised "compassionate intervention centre" to treat addicts who don't want to be treated? Where's our recovery community for those who do want treatment? Why don't we have enough shelter or jail space for those who need them? Why are we getting so mad at the city for not mopping up the water fast enough while giving the province a pass for leaving the floodgates open?


If we don't want mobile shelters, we need more permanent shelters. That is a provincial responsibility. They love preaching about staying in one's lane, and it is well past time that they practice what they preach.
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While I don’t really agree with Whattheheck’s “we need a Mark Carney-type mayor” point in YEG, mostly because it’s vague to the point of being meaningless, your argument still leans pretty heavily on a strawman. No one is asking the city to solve homelessness, fix addiction, or overhaul the judicial system. That’s obviously unrealistic. The issue people are actually raising is much narrower: is the City doing enough to keep its own transit system safe and clean?

Framing this as “well that’s the province’s job” skips over that distinction. Yes, the root causes behind a lot of what we’re seeing on transit are provincial. No one disputes that. But day-to-day conditions on the LRT are not some abstract policy question, they are operational. The city controls staffing levels, peace officer presence, cleaning frequency, station design, fare enforcement, and how rules are actually applied on the system. Those are not theoretical powers, they’re basic municipal functions. If the City chooses to expand their transit system, it is their responsibility to still manage it effectively. We are jumping from “the province is responsible for big systemic issues” to “so what is the city supposed to do?” as if the only options are fixing everything or doing nothing. There’s a wide middle ground of practical steps that fall squarely within the city’s control.

Also, pointing at the province as a kind of catch-all explanation doesn’t really answer the frustration people are expressing. People aren’t emailing their MLAs because a station feels unsafe or because trains are consistently dirty. They’re reacting to the City because a service they interact with directly, one that the city owns, runs, and budgets for, is not meeting the requisite standards. Deflecting that upward might be politically convenient, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying issue. To be clear, yes, municipalities are overburdened. Yes, resources are finite. And yes, the province could and probably should be doing more on housing, shelters, and addiction supports. But none of that negates the city’s responsibility to maintain a basic standard on its own transit system. “Stay in your lane” cuts both ways, and transit operations are very much in the city’s lane.

At the end of the day, no one is expecting the city to solve every upstream problem. But expecting visible enforcement, consistent cleaning, and a baseline sense of safety for paying, law-abiding riders is not some unreasonable ask. It’s the minimum.
 
Dubas said:
No one is asking the city to solve homelessness, fix addiction, or overhaul the judicial system.
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I never said they were asking for that, and I did not say the province has to "solve homelessness" or addictions before transit will be safe or clean. Nor did I say that the city shouldn't hire more peace officers or janitors (which I am on record here as advocating for more, and contacting councilors saying as much). What I am saying is that no matter how many peace or police officers we have, they will still just be kicking people out to move to the next station - at best with a few hours delay for booking them first.
Dubas said:
The city controls staffing levels, peace officer presence, cleaning frequency, station design, fare enforcement, and how rules are actually applied on the system. Those are not theoretical powers, they’re basic municipal functions.
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The city has grown the TPO compliment from ~80 in 2022 to 130 by this fall. They made the Covid-era enhanced transit cleaning permanent, and onboarded dedicated LRV cleaners. They're allocating some CRL funding to renovate downtown LRT entrances (long overdue). Fare checks and warnings/tickets have spiked, and some of the new TPOs are on dedicated teams whose sole purpose is literally to ride the LRT, fare check people, and monitor for incidents. The city has even pumped tens of millions into temporary shelter space and supportive/affordable housing.

Dubas said:
There’s a wide middle ground of practical steps that fall squarely within the city’s control.
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My whole point was that those practical steps, while important, are band-aids that we need to manage our expectations for. I'm not saying that the city bears no responsibility here, I'm saying that it's time people only fixate on what the municipality can do and not discuss the provincial aspect at play. Otherwise, accept that vandalism will continue to outpace the maintenance budget, stations and trains will continue to be used as shelters no matter how many times people are kicked out, and downtown stops/stations in particular will continue to be in a similar state to how they are now - unless you're willing to pay much more in taxes to hire the hundreds of TPOs we need to have 24/7 coverage at each and every LRT station/stop.


Dubas said:
Also, pointing at the province as a kind of catch-all explanation doesn’t really answer the frustration people are expressing.
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Respectfully, feelings don't fund solutions. The whole point of this forum is that we can take the time to dig beyond the surface. This isn't a conversation taking place at the actual stop, this is a conversation happening well after the fact when we have the time and ability to actually think things through.

Dubas said:
Deflecting that upward might be politically convenient, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying issue. To be clear, yes, municipalities are overburdened. Yes, resources are finite. And yes, the province could and probably should be doing more on housing, shelters, and addiction supports.
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Deflecting it downward doesn't solve anything either. Again, my whole point is that people should be emailing their MLAs about this just as much as they email their councilors, because all have a role to play here. People can excuse provincial inaction all they want because "UCP hate city so why try?" but that's not going to magically give Edmonton the money it needs to fund all of the resources needed to address the disorder and cleanliness issues. One councilor described the situation to me as "whack-a-mole." People get removed from one station, they have nowhere to go so they just move to another. And if they're doing drugs or broke some glass? That's a minor offence and the jails are full so best the court can do is give them a summons.

Dubas said:
But none of that negates the city’s responsibility to maintain a basic standard on its own transit system. “Stay in your lane” cuts both ways, and transit operations are very much in the city’s lane.

At the end of the day, no one is expecting the city to solve every upstream problem. But expecting visible enforcement, consistent cleaning, and a baseline sense of safety for paying, law-abiding riders is not some unreasonable ask. It’s the minimum.
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Sure, but let me be clear: the homeless population nearly tripled after Covid, and never went back down. We continue to be a dumping ground for regional communities and police forces. I've supported, and will continue to support, increased municipal investment in transit safety and cleanliness. But I'm just tired of these conversations only focusing on what the city should do in response to these issues, and not what the province should do to stop them from continuing to occur at the rate they are. Not completely. Just less than they are now.
 
fromtraintotower said:
For one, the province as of now is governed by the UCP, a conservative party that by design is at direct odds with the more progressive Edmonton. The UCP shut down or otherwise stopped supporting safe injections sites and homeless shelters, which Edmonton values quite a lot. Whether these things actually work (except for rare instances, they mostly don't anyway) is beside the point. The UCP, and consequently the province of Alberta, wants to wash their hands of this, so assigning the problems of Edmonton as the responsibility of the province of Alberta means diddly-squat.
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I'd argue that washing our hands of the provincial government does even less, and that Andrew Knack's approach to provincial engagement has been a good start. The first thing they teach you in Policy Studies is that you don't stop communicating your recommendations when a government changes - you instead tailor your messaging. If the province doesn't want to allow safe injection sites, push them on fast tracking their recovery-oriented solutions. Don't frame shelters as a social good, frame them (especially new ones outside of downtown) as a way to help the downtown business community. Don't frame court and jail expansion as a favour for Edmonton, frame it as being tough on crime. Heck, ask that they fund another 50 police officers for transit.
fromtraintotower said:
I am aware how council constantly knocks down proposals to install fare gates at the LRT stations because of some reason or another
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Fare gates weren't rejected because of a soft on crime attitude, they were rejected because their return on investment in Edmonton's context was deemed to be smaller than it is on hiring more TPOs.

Back to the Valley Line, we either need more and safer shelters, or 24/7 enforcement presence at those stops. Otherwise, even a few thin panes of glass and a roof beat sleeping outside when it's below freezing with a wind chill.
 
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CplKlinger said:
I never said they were asking for that, and I did not say the province has to "solve homelessness" or addictions before transit will be safe or clean. Nor did I say that the city shouldn't hire more peace officers or janitors (which I am on record here as advocating for more, and contacting councilors saying as much). What I am saying is that no matter how many peace or police officers we have, they will still just be kicking people out to move to the next station - at best with a few hours delay for booking them first.


The city has grown the TPO compliment from ~80 in 2022 to 130 by this fall. They made the Covid-era enhanced transit cleaning permanent, and onboarded dedicated LRV cleaners. They're allocating some CRL funding to renovate downtown LRT entrances (long overdue). Fare checks and warnings/tickets have spiked, and some of the new TPOs are on dedicated teams whose sole purpose is literally to ride the LRT, fare check people, and monitor for incidents. The city has even pumped tens of millions into temporary shelter space and supportive/affordable housing.


My whole point was that those practical steps, while important, are band-aids that we need to manage our expectations for. I'm not saying that the city bears no responsibility here, I'm saying that it's time people only fixate on what the municipality can do and not discuss the provincial aspect at play. Otherwise, accept that vandalism will continue to outpace the maintenance budget, stations and trains will continue to be used as shelters no matter how many times people are kicked out, and downtown stops/stations in particular will continue to be in a similar state to how they are now - unless you're willing to pay much more in taxes to hire the hundreds of TPOs we need to have 24/7 coverage at each and every LRT station/stop.



Respectfully, feelings don't fund solutions. The whole point of this forum is that we can take the time to dig beyond the surface. This isn't a conversation taking place at the actual stop, this is a conversation happening well after the fact when we have the time and ability to actually think things through.


Deflecting it downward doesn't solve anything either. Again, my whole point is that people should be emailing their MLAs about this just as much as they email their councilors, because all have a role to play here. People can excuse provincial inaction all they want because "UCP hate city so why try?" but that's not going to magically give Edmonton the money it needs to fund all of the resources needed to address the disorder and cleanliness issues. One councilor described the situation to me as "whack-a-mole." People get removed from one station, they have nowhere to go so they just move to another. And if they're doing drugs or broke some glass? That's a minor offence and the jails are full so best the court can do is give them a summons.


Sure, but let me be clear: the homeless population nearly tripled after Covid, and never went back down. We continue to be a dumping ground for regional communities and police forces. I've supported, and will continue to support, increased municipal investment in transit safety and cleanliness. But I'm just tired of these conversations only focusing on what the city should do in response to these issues, and not what the province should do to stop them from continuing to occur at the rate they are. Not completely. Just less than they are now.
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Why is Translink safe and ETS not?

Drug issues, homelessness, progressive leadership in council for the last 15 years. What’s the reason it’s so, so much worse here?

Ridership? Fare gates? Station design? Policing?
 
The_Cat said:
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"By year end, track from Lewis Farms to Stoney Plain Road will be complete, allowing us to work on the final connections."

I wonder if this includes Stoney Plain Road itself, or just up to the 156 St./SPR intersection? Either way, it's exciting to see this take shape, and I'm glad that things are going well so far.
 
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